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I was so amazed no-one had reviewed this book, that I bought it myself.

A transcription of lectures Ueshiba gave, and then lated reviewed by him as a teaching manual. The intro by Ueshiba is excellent (helps you understand some more esoteric comments in 'Budo', which is an ideal partner for this book).

It is of enormous historical importance (first released in 1933 and only recently available in English). But is also a fantastic book in its own right. The core of the book is 166 techniques with beautiful line drawings (from the original traced copies) which are suprisingly clear, with terse instructions on how to perform them.

This is obviously not a beginners aikido technique book (the techniques are so terse you need to know aikido pretty well before you could apply this). However for anyone who has pretty much seen most of the techniques in aikido, there are some here you won't have seen (mostly just variations, but probably from the aiki-jitsu repertoire; and like 'Budo', includes appropriate atemis and expressions like 'force the enemy down').

This book complements 'Budo' well. The material is not duplicated in any way. (Budo is photos, and has a lot less techniques, and the emphasis of the techniques used is different.) Definately buy them both.

The only drawbacks are i. it was in softback (my copy was anyway) ii. there are some spelling mistakes iii. one of the pcitures and explanaitions wasn't printed correctly (looks like the picture folder over, so some is blank). Even so BUY IT!